Hi all,

Olde Fashion Shout out.. I wanted to personally thank the community for making vPro Expert Center a great community. Thank you..

So...

We’re almost a year old in the community and I have a few exciting things to share. The vPro Radio show is now listed in the Itunes directory, search for Intel vPro and you will see the show. So if your on the go and want to hear us talk about vPro.

We have also started a blossoming partnership with myitforum.com which they have created an email distribution list that you can subscribe to. Click here and you can subscribe to the list, we just started this and already the dialogue last week was great.

Also we are working on fixing it so providing feedback, wiki updates and Ask the Experts thread is better for the community. Stay tuned as we fix this over the next week (or so)..

If you have additional feedback please post a comment here, or send me an email. josh@intel.com.

Thank You

Josh H
Intel Architect / Community Manager

vPro radio was live this morning and our topic was on SCE/SCOM and vPro support through the vPro Management Pack. Matt Royer joined us alongside one of the original developers (Nachman Israel) to discuss the use cases, the market focus, and more!


Visit Open Port Radio or Stream this Show Online

Community Members,

I can't tell you how excited I am to share this with you as I have been waiting awhile to showcase more about CIRA & what is coming in Montevina from a vPro stand point. I remember awhile back I was asked by a group of students if this capability would exist like this in the future & finally I can showcase more of the pieces of the puzzle to the world. For the folks out there that asked me about this & I just smiled.. well.. here's more of the puzzle..

Here is the AMT 4.0 (Cira, Montevina) Platform User Guide that explains the MEBx settings in detailed screen views.
AMT 4.0 (Cira, Montevina) - MEBx Platform User Guide

Also here is my first post on CIRA about what it does in picture format.
Client Initaitied Remote Access - vPro in 2008 - IDF

If you have any questions let me know & hopefully soon to follow will be a youtube video to show off these new capabilites of the new mobile platform.

Please watch out for this new platform to hit the news wire in the near future.....

As you saw in my last blog this show was on SCS 5.0 to see what’s coming in SCS' next version? SCS 5.0 is just around the corner and the vPEC team had our guests Shai Kavas and Chaim Rand join us. This version of SCS includes major usability and scalability improvements and contain some very exciting new features. Some of these cool features are results of feedbacks we got from our partners and… from YOU – our end customers. Check out this show right here!


Chaim Rand and Shai Kavas joined our favorite hair-colored host, Josh Hilliker...

Michele, Tim & I got together to talk about Activating vPro, the tools & the wiki's that help folks. This video was an output of us getting together.

If you did.. download here..

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/openport/2008/06/02/Intel-vPro-Expert-Center-Topic-TBD

We talked about the Activation zone and our favorite tools.. Check it out.. don't forget you can join the live call and ask questions in chat.

Also Jeff gave me a challenge.. Build a LEGO vPro Machine.. so.. Game ON!!

I wanted to share out why my top 3 tool picks are for starting up with vPro, usually I am using these tools when I'm working on connectivity, packets or errors in the logs in the mgmt console. I also often find that I'm using these tools late at night when i'm deep in troubleshooting mode & trying to do a root cause on why something is not working as planned i.e. hello packets are not starting on a given hardware platform, etc.. (I'll save the showcase for a youtube video soon)..

here they are.................

#1. MEinfowin.exe - Brian C posted a good link of where & how to get this from Lenovo's BIOS update. I highly recommend this tool for troubleshooting version of the ME, SOL, etc.. it also has good information on setup & configuration, link status, etc..
http://communities.intel.com/message/3649#3649

#2. Wireshark - Joel Smith (altiris) wrote about this in his blog, which is where I initially found the link. http://juice.altiris.com/article/3636/troubleshooting-altiris-manageability-toolkit-vpro-technology-part-1-provisioning-clien

Wireshark
While the two above tools are distinctly for Out of Band Provisioning, Wireshark tells the whole story of what is coming and going across the wire. It's important to know what the AMT clients are sending, especially in the 'Hello' packet, and what the server is responding with.

Wireshark can be obtained from: http://www.wireshark.org/. While this is the recommended tool, any network trace capture program can be used to examine the network traffic between the AMT client and the Provisioning Server.

#3. Intel® vPro™ Technology Test Utility - this is the old faithful tool to ensure your vPro system has the right ingredients.
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Product_Filter.aspx?ProductID=2575

These are my top 3, however if I were to go, in SMB mode I utilize the vPro Packet decoder and the AMT reflector, however I use those at very specific times when i've passed the top 3 and I am digging in even deeper.

I hope you enjoy the list and if you have a TOP tool favorite write a comment at the end of the blog and let me know as I am always looking for new tools that help troubleshooting.

Josh H

On the quest to find tools that showcase saving energy, $$'s & overall how to optimize your energy bill I ran across this cNET Article titled: Verdiem: Nyquil for energy-hog PCs
Full Details: http://www.news.com/8301-11128_3-9942968-54.html?tag=blog.promos.

I pulled this quote out as it applies to the vPro community.

"Verdiem Surveyor 5.0 has a console to centrally configure different devices and additional reporting tools. It also has better integration with Windows Vista and integrates with Intel's vPro PC management technology so that it can access machines that aren't turned on"

I think this may be a good tool to showcase the quest on "saving energy" that I have been discussing in my last few energy posts. I dug in deeper and found this site - http://www.greenmypcs.com/ in which they have a free download kit of information it looks like - I have to download & check it out.

If you are on this same quest.. let's check it out together & let me know your input on this blog.

Josh